The present invention relates to wireless communication, and in particular to systems and methods for reducing power consumption in wireless devices.
Wireless technology provides portable connectivity between electronic devices. Standard wireless communication protocols, such as Bluetooth, have streamlined wireless communications between electronic devices. For example, computer mice (and other pointing devices) have been developed using Bluetooth to provide wireless communication over a few meters of a local device (e.g. laptop computer). Additionally, Bluetooth may include profiles to describe, amongst other things, the uses and/or requirements of remote devices (e.g. pointing devices). This standardization has allowed for the development of many low data rate devices.
Bluetooth has been historically limited to a few Mbits/second in data rate. High data rate applications, such as audio or video streaming, for example, may not be supported by the historical capability of Bluetooth. On the other hand, IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.11 protocols may have a data rates up to 54 Mbits/second or higher, and may be able to support a wider number of applications requiring more bandwidth. Unfortunately, IEEE 802.11 has been implemented primarily for full scale networking which may require sophisticated connection setup and may consume more power than a Bluetooth application.
Bluetooth AMP (“BT AMP”) mates the standardization of Bluetooth with the bandwidth of IEEE 802.11. BT AMP refers to a Bluetooth protocol that uses an alternate media access controller (“MAC”) and physical layer (“PHY”). BT AMP initiates the link between two devices using the Bluetooth protocol, and may use an IEEE 802.11 protocol, for example, to transport large amounts of data, such as audio or video. Above the transport level (in the OSI model) the application may use Bluetooth profiles. Bluetooth simplifies the discovery and setup of services between devices and IEEE 802.11 increases the data rate.
However, many wireless devices are battery operated. For example, from cell phones and personal digital assistants (“PDAs”) to wireless speakers and mice, reducing power consumption in wireless devices remains an ongoing challenge.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide reduce power consumption in wireless communications.